A Consumer's Guide to Male Hustlers (20 page)

By that time, I had no desire to resume my relationship with Gabriel. I had been very disturbed by the abuse he took from York.

I was also disappointed by his willingness to take the therapist's advise to stop being a "sex object" and, at the time, continue to be battered. (She counseled him to try to work things out with York.) As in Jed's case, I knew that once a shrink tells a hustler that making money this way is the source of his mental anguish, it will forever after be on his mind when he conducts his business.

I lost touch with Gabriel until I ran into him a few years later. He was in a halfway house learning how "not to use." He looked very thin and a lot older. I do not know whether his HIV had become symptomatic.

My six years with Gabriel were a case of having my cake and eating it. I had excellent sex with him at a price I could afford. Nobody ever got free sex from Gabriel—not even his boyfriend Wolfgang. At least I got it at an affordable price, in a forthright and honorable manner.

I could have saved a lot of money by not having Gabriel in my life. I could have gone to baths and sex clubs instead, and gotten it on, over and over again, with men I had no interest in. The money I spent on Gabriel was an excellent investment in my sexual well- being. For his part, Gabriel received not only my money but all sorts of help. Contrary to his therapist's views, it had been a good deal for both parties.

Chapter 11

A Monthly Arrangement

In my experience, dating hustlers has three advantages over meeting guys at the baths. First, the hustlers I pick are always my physical type. (I would not engage a hustler I do not care for physically. At the baths, by necessity, I compromise a lot.) Second, if I have sex with a hustler more than once, we are physically compatible. (At the baths availability takes precedence over compatibility.) Third, hustlers who are my type and with whom I am compatible are available to me when I want and need them.

There is a belief out there that it is a dreadful experience for men or women to have sex when they do not desire it, or with a partner not of their choosing, even if it is consensual. I have never understood why having to perform sexually as a job is, physically or psychologically, worse than, for instance, having to work in a coal mine eight hours a day.

But I know little about mining. Maybe coal miners go down the mine shaft with a song in their hearts. Let's take working at the baths, about which I know a lot more, as an example. Over the years, I have not only observed bath attendants at work, but also had sexual flings with a number of them. I know quite a bit about their working conditions. I am referring here to the workers who change the cum-stained sheets, dispose of the used condoms, and clean the shower stalls and the toilets. If I had to choose between having daily sex with Jack (the guinea pig in my hustler experiment), or working eight hours as an attendant in a bath house, I would opt for the former.

Even though having sex with Jack (or anybody else I did not care for) would be distasteful and tedious, it would have many advantages over an attendant's job. It would shorten my workday by seven hours. It would be physically less taxing and safer.

(Attendants are exposed to everything from bodily fluids to used needles.) And, most important, I would not be subject to the pressures of patrons waiting for rooms, co-workers goofing off and expecting me to do their jobs, and the manager giving me a hard time.

I write all of this because part of the job description of a hustler is to perform sexually when the client desires it, the same way that a cabby picks up a fare when flagged or dispatched. As long as a hustler has control over his working hours and can elect
not
to get it on with certain clients, it is a job like any other job.

From the very beginning of my dealings with hustlers, I have been resentful about the size of their fees. This resentment has been based, primarily, on the percentage of my total income that I have been spending on hustlers. But it has also been envy. As a teacher, school principal, community college instructor, court interpreter, and hypnotherapist, I have never been paid per hour as much as an average model.

For many years, I toyed with the idea of working out a sex-for-money arrangement with a gay college student not of the hustler discipline. Such an arrangement would guarantee him a monthly income in return for a stipulated number of sexual sessions. I would pay him, say, four times his hourly wage in his part-time job, and guarantee him a fixed number of sessions per month. This way he would earn more and I would pay less. I thought this would be an especially good deal for a student who needed to augment his income with a minimum expenditure of time. Such an agreement could not be made with hustlers or models because they are used to taking in much larger amounts of money per session.

Two considerations deterred me. I did not want to commit myself to a fixed number of paid sessions because, albeit
very
rarely, I found free, satisfactory sex partners. And suppose, however unlikely, I found a permanent boyfriend. What would I do with the hustler I had retained on a monthly basis? I also realized that if I guaranteed a fixed number of sessions to a student, he would have to have sex with me on a regular schedule. He would, in effect, become my part-time employee. This would bring with it the usual squabbles between employees and their bosses.

The end of my relationship with Gabriel coincided with a reduction of my visits to the baths. I resigned myself to the fact that, at the baths, I would never find a boyfriend who would rescue me from hustlers. Neither of Gabriel's two understudies was good enough to take over his role on a permanent basis. I felt I needed a radical change. I started advertising for a "Mutually beneficial arrangement, ideal for a student."

My ad campaigns brought astonishing results, though no arrangement. Most surprising were the large number of replies and the economic status of some of the respondents. My ads were placed in two freebie non-gay papers. This maneuver brought in quite a number of bisexuals who would not even have read the gay papers, in addition to many gay respondents. Since I did not ask for free samples, and I was not about to pay for sex seven days a week, some applicants had to wait a month for a trial session. (These sessions were scheduled after applicants had done well on a telephone interview, followed up by a personal meeting in a cafe.)

Quite a few respondents were not struggling young students. They were older professionals, earning decent salaries, such as a psychiatric social worker, a teacher, a court clerk. They loved the idea of selling their bodies!
¹
The money was only part of it. The adventure of prostituting themselves was a big turn on. It was, of course, a controlled adventure. Unlike real hustlers, they could always bring the experiment to a halt.

¹
. I have known a number of models who have professional jobs. They are so afraid of being exposed that they end up with a case of paranoia. A hustling arrangement with one person would be much easier for them to handle.

Among the younger respondents were quite a few first-year college students who wanted to have sex with an older man. The money was a lure as well as a justification.

The older professionals were well above the "thirty years old" limit I had specified in my ad. One of them, who claimed to be twenty-nine, was a schoolteacher. I did get it on with him a number of times. He was very much into pleasing and, though not exactly my physical type, was a very pleasant companion, with a great sense of humor. Our intellectual conversations made up for the lack of instant attraction. I met him in April. As soon as the school year came to an end, he decided to move East. He only wanted to earn extra income for a few months before his move.

With all the young college students I experienced the same problem. I'll write here about Sean, the one I liked best. Sean was only the third or fourth redhead in my life. He was a very clean-cut, outgoing, bisexual, WASPish preppie, twenty years old. He was into sports, especially tennis, and his physique showed it. Sexually he was interested in women his own age, and much older men. However crazy this may sound, he treated
me
as a sex object—any other man my age would have done just as well. Sean would never have permitted a man his own age to have sex with him, however much money the latter offered! There was a tremendous expenditure of sexual energy between us because Sean was so much into the sexual act with an older guy.

Like a street hustler, Sean would not keep appointments. He would try to fit me into a convenient time slot which, when the time came, he would try to change to another day. He had held all sorts of jobs before. I am absolutely certain that he took more liberties as a sex worker than in any other job. Even though he got paid much better by me than on his other jobs, he never understood that having sex was a job like any other.

I was surprised that I ran into this attitude with so many of the applicants. I am convinced that if I had interviewed them for a position such as a part-time driver, they would have understood that they would have to adhere to a schedule suiting my needs.

After interviewing many applicants, over a long period, I concluded that an arrangement would work only with someone who had served an apprenticeship as a model. I resigned myself to the fact that recruiting a former model would be a more expensive proposition because of his greater financial expectations.

In the meantime, when not interviewing, I saw my regular models who gave me a quantity discount. They were far superior to anybody I would have met at the baths, but not exciting enough for an "arrangement."

One day I was reading the model ads in the local gay paper when the following ad caught my attention:

Haitian/East Indian, youthful, 5'10", 137 lbs.,

dancer's body, very affectionate, $80, out only.

Eureka! I exclaimed. I hit the jackpot. Everything I could possibly want in
one
package!

Many years earlier, I had visited Haiti. In those days it was ruled by the ruthless dictator Frangois Duvalier (Papa Doc) with his secret Gestapo-like police, the Tonton Macoutes, brutally enforcing his regime. There was something about Haitian men, in conjunction with the tropical setting, that maddened me with raw lust. I had heard a lot about the Tonton Macoutes. Driven by my lust, I chose to disregard them completely, going merrily about my cruising.

Many East Indians live in Haiti, as well as in other Caribbean countries. I have no idea how much intermarriage there is between Haitians and East Indians. But I know that the offspring of such marriages are very appealing to me. I am fascinated by their looks, and even more so by their very dark skin, which resembles burnished copper. Any model who described himself as Haitian/East Indian would be on my short list.

And now, in front of me, was a model's ad, reminding me of so many joyful experiences. To top it all, the ad stated that he was "affectionate," the attribute I cherish most. It took three days, and many beeps, for the model to call back. Finally, my phone rang right after I beeped him. "I am Etienne. Did you beep me?" he asked.

I am very voice conscious. Etienne had a soft, sweet voice. He pronounced his name as a Francophone would. He said that he was a dance student, very slim and very dark. He was born in Haiti but raised in Miami. "I got dreads," he said, as if this would tip the scales one way or another. Actually, it did. More and more Etienne appeared to be a made-to-order model. I am crazy about dreadlocks.

"How old are you, Etienne?"

"I am twenty-five, but I look eighteen."

"I would very much like to see you," I said.

"I have a very busy schedule." There was long, inexplicable silence. "Can you pick me up at three o'clock tomorrow in front of my dance studio? It is on Franklin Street right off Market."

I agreed to pick him up, and gave him a description of my car. Before we ended the conversation he asked in a serious voice: "Do you know how to spell Etienne?"

"I think so." I spelled it for him.

"You forgot the accent on the first 'E.' It's Étienne."

"I'll remember this," I said.

Franklin Street is a major traffic artery. There was no parking available near Etienne's dance studio. Double parking was out of the question. I stopped the car some thirty yards north of the building by a fire hydrant, and waited, inside the vehicle, for Étienne. I kept looking in the rearview mirror watching for him. After ten minutes, I assumed he had stood me up. I was absolutely sure I had the right address because a large sign on the first floor read The Hip & Hop Dance Studio. I was pretty disappointed. I decided to give it another five minutes.

I had just started the car, when I saw in the mirror someone I assumed to be Étienne walking out of the building. As if guided by an inner radar, he turned left and walked up to my car. He let himself in and, in his sweet voice, asked, "Have you just arrived?"

My anger dissipated, giving way to a feeling of gratitude to the universe that it had created a man so much to my liking. I don't know how to describe Étienne objectively. Later, when I would ask friends who had met Étienne what they thought of him, they invariably said something like, "He's OK," or "You like them exotic-looking, don't you?" Just a while ago, my best friend saw me looking at Étienne's photo. "You must admit," he said, "that Étienne was really
medio feo
." This quaint Spanish designation of "half ugly" adds some redeeming qualities to a person's basic homeliness. I concede that Étienne may not have been handsome by normative standards. For me, and his other admirers, he was the cutest guy in the world. For us he was an
homme fatal
.

Étienne did, indeed, look like an eighteen-year-old. Each of his dreadlocks had some blond hair woven into it, accentuating his far-out looks. The dreads also added to his androgynous appearance. In the car he was not very talkative. He never apologized for being late. I tried to keep up a conversation while I drove back home.